Many problems exist when a customer of a telephone service provider receives a phone call and wants to reject the incoming phone call. In conventional systems, a customer is limited to sending the caller to a voice mail system or not answering the call. For example, a business customer may be in a meeting or a customer may be in a place where cell phones are not encouraged (e.g., in a movie theater, conference, class, hospital, etc.). If the customer is expecting an important call, the options available for the customer in conventional systems are to: (1) reject the call by pressing an ignore button ultimately directing the call to voicemail, and then return the call whenever possible; (2) take the call and inform the calling party that he or she will call back at a more appropriate time; or (3) not answer the call.
Other conventional passive call rejection options which are available for landline customers are: adding a list of phone numbers to a rejection call list and a switch automatically sends out a reject message when a call is received from any number on the rejection call list; pressing a reject button to reject a call; and anonymous call rejection setup (*77) which automatically rejects numbers without caller identification (“caller ID”).
There are many disadvantage to the above options, several of which are discussed below. Referring to option (1), if the caller urgently needs to speak with the customer and does not know if the voice message or call has been received, the caller may try calling the customer multiple times. Referring to option (2), the customer may take the call even though it may be intrusive to others and may distract those sitting nearby.
These and other embodiments and advantages will become apparent from the following detailed description, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, illustrating by way of example the principles of the various exemplary embodiments.